Posts Tagged ‘At Long Last Leave

We’ve (they’ve) made it! Before I start this review, I’d like to say that from what I’ve read about this episode, it seems a red reminiscent of The Simpsons Movie, but it doesn’t seem overly copied or terrible, just yet. Let’s roll the tape.

The most meaningless milestone of all – the 500th episode! The couch gag (which was said to make HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall ‘choke up’) was great, actually. Despite its length, the couch gag (going to the very beginning of the couch gags) was nice to see, later panning out to show the couch gags forming a photographic mosaic of the number “500.” Bart’s line, “Bunkerball is keeping us sane” was worthy of a chuckle, if only for a bit; “The Optimist Club” funding the float featuring the slogan “Simpsons, Go to Hell” was another notable line. Other notable quotables/moments: Homer’s crude disguises for him and Marge to sneak into Springfield, along with his amateurish Mr. Burns impression, “I’m sick of watching FOX!” (while watching an actual fox sleep), and Homer referencing Dan Castellaneta’s Walter Matthau-inspired voice (“Remember when we moved in and I talked like this?”) from season one and parts of season two. The guest appearance of Julian Assange was unneeded and unfunny, useful for an overused “WikiLeaks” reference.

I’m a person that doesn’t like open endings (unless you feel as if you are going to be assured later on) on television shows, so I was not a particular fan of the ending, but it wasn’t overly terrible and I’m sure to maintain the status quo, the relocation of all of the town’s residents to the Outlands will be retconned for the following episode. The ending slide, “Get some fresh air before going on the internet and saying how much this sucked,” is yet another self-aware joke from season 23, appropriate for what I (and many other watchers/fans of The Simpsons as of right now) am essentially doing with this review (although I’m not stating this episode sucked per se).

Overall, this was an appropriate 500th episode, at least in my opinion. It was semi-lackluster in jokes (it is season 23, after all), and, in my view, ended too soon (I would have liked to see more of what happened to the residents that kicked the Simpsons family out of Springfield and then moved with them to the Outlands) but it wasn’t overly terrible. Let’s see The Simpsons go for another 100, 200, or 500 more (let’s see).

[Intellectual property – the 500 emblem that I myself put on the couch – yoinked from here!]

We’ve (we’ve? What did we do other than register our disgust at episodes in the post-classic era? More accurate: ‘they’ve’) made it! Tonight at 8pm (7pm central) on FOX, The Simpsons will air its 500th episode, entitled “At Long Last Leave.” To celebrate this (meaningless milestone) occasion, I will review all previous -00th episodes, starting with the 100th (what else?), “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song.” (stay tuned!)

[recalling a table read for the 200th episode, “Trash of the Titans] “that was a staggering number. David Mirkin, one of the executive producers, said, ‘Well, we’re halfway home.’ And everybody laughed because it was obvious that there was no way we would be on for 400. So now to have done 500 is really fatiguing,” Matt Groening recalls in an interview with LA Times. On February 8, 2012, FOX, in an effort to place a record in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest continuous television viewing, selected one-hundred “The Simpsons” fans for a marathon of the show, starting from the very first episode. The last remaining as the record was broken would be crowned the winners, and the remaining two, Jeremiah Franco and Carin Shreve, won as the record was broken on February 12, 2012 after reaching the eleventh season of the show; Franco and Shreve were also selected to join the cast and crew for the 500th episode celebration on February 13. Before the US airing on February 19, reviews of the episode have been seen as “generally positive,” HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall reported the “couch gag was marvelous, it actually made me choke up a bit.” TIME writer James Poniewozik, who believes the quality of “The Simpsons” declined at the end of the 1990s, reported that it was an “all right episode,” with a few gags feeling “forced,” but also reporting that “a few moments made me bark out loud and realize why I loved the show in the first place.”

On other things, if for whatever reason you haven’t heard of the plot of tonight’s 500th episode, here it is, coming generously from Wikipedia (along with several of those quotes above!):

The Simpson family discovers that everyone in Springfield has grown tired of them and are secretly planning to have them thrown out of the city. The family moves out of Springfield to a rugged place where Julian Assange becomes their new neighbor.

A tad bit reminiscent of The Simpsons Movie, hm? The plot doesn’t really specify many details other than the overall plot, so nothing can be assumed (at least in my opinion) overly terrible about it, just yet. Let’s wait and see.